Head of Happiness is an informal job title that I’ve acquired during my time here at Visions, but one that I’ve become particularly fond of! Why? Because I LOVE seeing everybody happy and rowing in the same direction, and I’m partly responsible for that. When good company culture is amazing, it makes the journey of the business is on a whole lot easier!
We all know what toxic company culture is, don’t we? We’ve all worked in roles with management that don’t care, and co-workers that are more interested in stepping on you to get to the top. Well, think of good company culture as the reverse of that. We spend a lot of time at work, sometimes we spend more time with those we work with than we do with our own family. That’s why good company culture, feels like a family, and hey it even feels like a second home.
When going through your recruitment process, it goes without saying you’ve got to get the right person. A bad hire could seriously upset the apple cart. When interviewing potential employees, you should benchmark them against your company values. How do you do that? Make a list of questions you always ask that help to assess if their values match. For example, if one of your key values is integrity, you’d probably want to ask a question around a time they showed integrity.
Next up, onboard them correctly, start as you mean to go on. If you’ve got a culture deck, make sure you share it! HR inductions can be super long and boring, so try to keep it interesting! The culture deck should showcase your ethos, values, and your approach. If you share early, employees feel like they are part of a movement and they’re all on the same page.
Happy employees are your best advocates, so it’s your job to ensure they stay happy. Often when things get busy, it’s hard to remember just what you’ve achieved. At Visions, we encourage everyone to keep a document of all their achievements as they happen. It makes appraisals more productive, and great work should ALWAYS be celebrated. We also have a Positivity Jar, to shout about all the things we are proud of. At the end of each quarter (or if we need a morale boost), we pull out a few and share some good news!
If you’ve got bad company culture, spending time with your colleagues may seem like the worst idea ever… but not if you’ve got good culture. Teams that get along are more likely to spend their free time doing group activities together. We set up company events and do fun things such as Crazy Golf, outside laser quest, and even Go Karting! This is great team building and so much fun!
Recognition is key! Everybody likes to be told they’re doing a great job, whether that be in the form of a quiet message or publicly. How we show recognition can totally depend on the person, and it’s important to understand each and every employee. Some love to be rewarded financially, some just value their time, so they might want to finish an hour early, it’s about personalising your approach.
